


The Middle Sector

by Aliana



Series: Back to Middle-earth Month 2012 [6]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Anachronistic, F/F, Femslash, Humor, IN SPACE!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-22
Updated: 2012-03-22
Packaged: 2017-11-02 09:09:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/367338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aliana/pseuds/Aliana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The erstwhile Key-Wardeness of the starship <i>Nargothrond</i> gives us her perspective on (among other things) the Kin-slaying, Lúthien’s quest, pros and cons of zero-gravity trysting, and why Celegorm isn’t Such a Bad Guy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Middle Sector

**Author's Note:**

> March 8  
>  **B2MeM Challenge:** B10: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (Book Titles); Scarcity (Economy); Melian and her Descendants (Femslash)  
>  N41: Everything is better in space (Crackfic); Redistribution (Economy)  
>  **Format:** Short story  
>  **Genre:** Is there a special genre name for when a fan author goes a little bit soft in the head? If not, then humor, I guess. Sort of.  
>  **Rating:** Teen  
>  **Warnings:** See “Genre,” above. Some profanity. Also, sex.  
>  **Characters:** Lúthien, Celegorm, OFC, and featuring Huan the Houndroid™  
>  **Pairings:** Lúthien/OFC

In after-days, it was said that Lúthien Thingol’s daughter was the fairest creature ever to grace the circles of the world. It was said that when she passed by, Varda’s stars glittered all the brighter, in admiration of one who was as their sister, one who glowed so brightly.

Typical crunchy-granola Sindarin nonsense, if you ask me. She was pretty enough—okay, stunning, I’ll give her that. But everyone knows that stars don’t actually glitter, not when you’re up among them and can see them as they are. All that twinkle, twinkle stuff is just an optical illusion you get when you’re staring up from the surface of a planet.

Anyway. I’d been hearing the stories about her for quite a few years—how her old man had gone native with some Maia chick after traveling back to the Middle Sector from the _SS Valinor_ ; how Lúthien had at some point hooked up with a scruffy vegetarian Secondborn, about which her dad was none too pleased (I think it was mostly the vegetarian part that bugged him). I don’t give much heed to idle gossip, though, so I hadn’t really given her a lot of thought until she actually turned up on the _Nargothrond_.

At that time, I was employed as the Key-Wardeness under Celegorm. It was pretty boring most of the time, but it wasn’t too demanding, either, and full-time positions could be scarce in those days. I know that afterwards, Celegorm got a pretty bad rap for a lot of the stuff he did, and I’ll admit that some of that trash-talk is probably deserved. But, say what you want about him, he was a great boss. Generous with benefits and paid time off, excellent insurance plan. And, most important to me, he was pretty laid-back about a lot of things.

I am very easygoing, myself. Always have been. You hear all this stuff about fiery, hot-blooded Noldor, but really, that’s never been my style. In fact, I once heard that among the Sindar I’m reckoned _Celleth_ , which I believe translates to “the languid” or something. I’m not sure; to be honest, their words have always sounded like a bunch of confetti rubbing together, to me. Anyway, I just sort of go with the flow. All my life, that’s been my blessing and my curse. Week-long camping trip to stalk the elusive Supernova Elk in the asteroid fields? Okay, why not? Four a.m. warehouse rave with the Sons of Fëanor? Sure, count me in—I haven’t got anything better to do.

So, when the Big Guy started raving about Morgoth and the Silmarils and took that crazy Oath, I felt like things were getting a little bit intense for me. But I was intrigued by the prospect of seeing the Middle Sector—I’d been born and raised on Tirion. So while I didn’t swear the Oath, myself, I just sort of trailed along with everyone else to see what would happen. Well, before I knew it, we were at the Alqualondë launching pads, and then things started to get ugly really fast. To be honest, I wasn’t really paying attention to what was going on, since I was busy catching up with Bobby, a really nice Teleri guy who was (I think) my second cousin, thrice removed on my mom’s side, and whom I hadn’t seen in a few years. But all of a sudden, people were starting to fight, and yell about the ships. Then I heard someone—might have been Fëanor, himself, actually—say, “Gilië! For the love of Eru, don’t just _stand_ there!”

So, yeah, I might have stabbed some people. Okay, maybe a couple dozen people. Given his proximity to me at the time, I have the sinking suspicion that Bobby was among them, though I can’t say for sure. Do I feel bad about it? Absolutely. Going with the flow is my blessing and my curse, as I said. At the same time, though, you can’t change what’s in the past, and I try not to let the memories run my life. And, on the _Nargothrond_ , I had a pretty good life, indeed.

I was in charge of all the airlocks, and the restricted passageways on Celegorm’s part of the ship. When need arose, I was also responsible for watching over any female inmates who were being detained there. There weren’t really a lot of either of those—inmates, or females. If the men who followed Fëanor to the Middle Sector were, let’s say, a _special_ bunch, then the relatively few women who came over with them were even more self-selecting. There were Galadriel and Aredhel, of course. And then there was Urwen the Unstable, a formidable warrior in her own right. She was clept “the Unstable” because of her propensity towards really weird conceptual art that we all pretended to appreciate for the sake of politeness, and also because we were kind of afraid of her. There was also Lindis, who I think had something like sixteen cats at one point. I’m not kidding. There was Tariel, who left Aman, she said, because she was fed up with the bourgeois oligopoly of the Valar, or something like that. And then there was me.

On that particular day, I was keeping company with Tariel, who’d been thrown in the brig for leafleting without a permit on the public deck. She’d been doing her thing, again, going on about the tyrannical hold of the aristocracy over the political system, about the need for a more comprehensive social safety net and wealth-redistribution program on the ship. By this point she’d been in the lockup maybe three or four times already, so she knew the drill and was pretty calm about the whole thing. Celegorm could have done something more severe with her, by now, like banish her or throw her into a canyon on the next planet we passed, but I guess he didn’t see her as that much of a threat. And so he was content to just put her in jail for a few days at a time. See? Not such a bad guy.

To pass the time, Tariel and I were playing cards in her cell, when Celegorm called me out for some “special instructions.”

Lúthien of Doriath had just come into the custody of the _Nargothrond_ , he told me. She was rather unstable, poor thing, he said, and was raving about journeying to the planet Angband and helping some vegan political prisoner recover a Silmaril. It was our job to make sure she was kept safe here until her parents could come and collect her. Well, the way Celegorm described it, she did indeed sound pretty unstable—maybe not as unstable as Urwen, with her toenail-and-baking-soda collages, but a little bit loopy all the same. And so Celegorm’s plan sounded eminently reasonable to me. I told him that I would see to it that she was well looked-after, and that she wouldn’t be able to wander away.

“That’s my girl, Gilië,” he grinned, clapping me on the shoulder. “I can always count on you.”

Because Lúthien was not a criminal, she was staying in a nicely-appointed suite of rooms on one of the upper decks. She could even pass freely about the surrounding corridors, if she wanted. That night I went to her quarters to check on her. I admit, I could have dispatched one of my petty officers to do so instead—and afterwards, sometimes I wished I had. But I figured that, as a princess, even an unstable one, she was due some sort of ceremony in these proceedings. And more than that, I was pretty curious about her.

As I approached, I could here the familiar hydraulic buzz of mechanical joints moving. In the corridor, Huan passed me—from that direction, he could only have been coming from Lúthien’s rooms. Rather odd, I thought, since Huan was rarely far from his master’s side. Huan was the greatest of the Houndroids™ which Oromë himself had fashioned on the _Valinor_ , a gift to Celegorm in days of old. He had a magnificent form of corrosion-proof brushed steel, and was seldom in need of maintenance. Far from an automaton, he had a mind of his own, and a noble copper-wire heart.

I stopped when I saw him. “Hiya Huan! How’s it going? Who’s a good boy? Who’s a good boy?” I patted his cold metal head. He stopped briefly and wagged his tale with that oddly spasmodic, motorized movement which always creeped me out a little bit. Vala or no, Oromë couldn’t get _everything_ right, I guessed.

Huan resumed his trot in the other direction, leaving me briefly to wonder what he doing up here. Then I went to the door of Lúthien’s rooms, and knocked.

“Come in,” a gentle voice said from inside, and I did. The lady was sitting on a divan in the middle of the front room, looking calm and not in the least unstable. She was stunning, as I’ve said before: flawless skin, deep grey eyes, thick black hair that rippled down her back. Even her posture was beautiful; she made sitting up look like an art. She smiled at me, and even then, perhaps, I felt an answering tug in my heart.

I introduced myself, and asked her if she was comfortable here, and if she needed anything.

“I know you,” she said in the Noldorin tongue, and I wondered that she should know it, since I’d heard that that language had been banned in Doriath, where they spoke only their confetti-whisper speech. “Gilië Celleth you are called.”

I nodded, surprised that she would have heard of me.

“The laid-back one,” she continued, still smiling. “At the moment I desire nothing, thank you.” I was about to bid her good-bye and be on my way, strangely relieved, when she added, “Nothing besides company to pass the time, perhaps. Will you not sit with me for a while?”

And so I sat next to her on the divan, there being nowhere else to sit. She asked me to tell her a bit about the _Nargothrond_ , and I did, dutifully singing the praises of the ship and its many decks. I even told her a little bit about the white houses of Tirion and Aman, although Alqualondë was a gaping ugly hole in my stories. She didn’t ask, but I’m sure she knew. Then I asked her about Doriath, her father and mother’s planet, and she told me about the forests and the mountains, how she liked to sing and dance in the glades. I found myself missing Tirion, and the firm ground of a planet beneath my feet—we’d been adrift for awhile, most of us Noldorin. She did not speak of Angband, or of the Silmaril, or of the vegan political prisoner. Her voice was sweet, and I could feel it envelop me like a gentle breeze back in my city.

“Lovely are those who have basked in the light of the Trees, indeed,” she said, then. It took me a couple of seconds to realize that she was talking about me, and I smiled. I’m not bad-looking, of course—all of my folk are counted very fair, except maybe for Lindis, because she spends too much time with those cats, and has this weird eye tic thing now. Still, to hear such praise from such a one as Lúthien made me blush—in retrospect it also should have made me suspicious, but I’d let myself become enchanted in her presence, as if I’d swallowed a little bit too much wine at once.

I muttered something like, “Thanks,” and she reached out and brushed a strand of hair away from my face. “Lovely are those who wander now among the stars of Varda,” she continued. I blinked. Her eyes were the color of tempered steel. My palms prickled with sweat. When she leaned across the divan cushions and kissed me, her lips against mine were so soft that I did not pull away.

I’m not a blushing virgin, of course, and I certainly wasn’t, then—hadn’t been for a very long time. Still, I hadn’t had a great deal of experience with other women. There’d been the drunken make-out session with Aredhel at a house party many years ago—not in front of the guys, of course; we’d kept our dignity even then. That had been fun, but we’d giggled more than we’d kissed—it felt silly, as if we were playing pretend.

This didn’t feel silly, at all. I was the one pulling her closer, now, deepening the kiss. Her lips were sweet, and she smelled of distant pine, something I’d not smelled in a very long time. I put my arms around her, and she bent her head and bit down at the spot where my neck met my shoulder—even her teeth and bones seemed gentle.

I pulled back, then, breathing hard, wondering just what I was doing. I was kissing a half-Maia princess who was supposed to be under my protective custody, under my lock and key, and while I was on the clock, to boot. That was what I was doing. And then she smiled at me again, and this time the grey of her eyes suggest the current of a melt-water river in early spring, cold but alive.

And so, not for the first time in my life, and certainly not for the last, I went with it.

It was strange, being with another woman, but it was a strangeness that I found I liked: the mirroring curves and softness, the way our voices twined at the same pitch. It seemed there was no distance between us, there on the divan. I was relieved, too, that she didn’t want to switch off the gravity. At that time, zero-g sex was all the rage, at least on the _Nargothrond_ —everyone waxing poetic about being weightless with your lover, like some Chagall painting, and gazing at Varda’s stars out the window and having them float along with you, and whatever. I never really cared for it, myself, beyond the novelty value—just seemed unnecessarily awkward to me, and at some point you’ve _got_ to anchor yourself down, somehow, don’t you? With her, I was anchored, all right. Her weight was solid against mine, and I gasped for air and sank, sank as if to the bottom of the sea.

Despite that sweet heaviness, I woke up feeling light, and happier than I’d ever felt. I was also alone. Not only was I alone, but my keys were gone, as well.

Oh, fuck.

You know the rest of the story, of course: Lúthien broke out of the _Nargothrond_ with the help of the great Houndroid™, fleeing in a stolen escape pod to find her destiny. And her lover. I found out later that even then, even as she’d stroked my hair and leaned forward to kiss me, she’d been bound to the mortal doom of the Secondborn. That vegan guy. You’d think that, for the way she’d enthralled me, seduced me, this would make me bitter. And maybe it should. But somehow I don’t begrudge her that, don’t begrudge the way she used one person’s lust in service of love for another. And sometimes I even feel grateful that I got to be a part of her story, no matter how small and secret.

And secret it was—no one ever found out about our interlude, you see, and to my knowledge she never told anyone. There were deep grooves and scratches found on the door of her chambers, and on the doors to the escape pod airlock; it was all the Houndroid™, they said later. Meanwhile, my keys turned up tucked safely inside my door. So, this too, is why I’ve got no bitterness towards her, because somewhere in her heart she took enough care for me, not to get me in trouble, servant of Celegorm though I was.

And besides, she’s dead now, and it’s hardly fitting to speak ill of the deceased.

It would be really easy to say that she bewitched me, worked her spells on me—her power was not inconsiderable, after all. (Though if anyone tells you she toppled Morgoth with her song alone, they are full of shit. She had a really nice voice, but no one can sing that well, even the fairest creature ever to grace the circles of the world. She was just a crack shot with a laser gun and had stainless steel balls, that’s all.) But anyway, it would be really easy to say that I wasn’t myself when I went to her. But that’s not fair to either of us. I like to think that she saw something in me and called to it, and that I answered. And, after a while, I found that that something in me would answer to others, as well, though before her I’d never been smitten, easygoing as I was.

I still think of Lúthien, today, as I thought of her time to time over all the intervening thousands of years with all their wars and destruction and rebuilding and bullshit and beauty. Portland’s no Doriath, of course, nor is it any Tirion, for that matter, but Tariel and I like it here well enough.  I think she’s finally found her niche; she’s even thinking of running for office. I had to do a few Secondborn degrees, which were kind of a joke, but now I teach astronomy at the local college. At least a few times a semester, I meet my students on a hillside near campus on nights when the weather is clear.  I talk them through all of Varda’s constellations, though they’ve all got different names, now. And I always get a little bit excited when I see that the stars are glittering, even if I know it’s all an illusion.


End file.
